peter said:
Which music service delivers the highest fidelity for downloaded tracks
(whether burn to CD or in mp3 form)? I just want to buy 1 track of an old
christmas song. I want something that sounds better than a 128Kbps mp3
What is the quality of the msn music download?
If there is a review on this issue, please point me to it.
The gold standard is CD quality, which is very specific. For a stereo
CD, it is 1411 Kbps, 16 bit audio sample size, 44.1 kHz. The format is
called PCM, which is just an uncompressed wave file having the
properties mentioned. I have never bought music online, because I have
not found sites that let you download at exact CD standards. There
could be sites that do. Most sites used a compressed format, with mp3,
wma, and ra being the most common. These come in several types. A
compressed format labeled "lossless' is likely to have the best
quality for a given type, such as wma lossless, and it is only
moderately compressed. Some tests reported in a sound magazine a few
years ago showed that most people could detect problems in sound for a
mp3 recorded under about 300 Kbps on certain material. The compressed
format "busters" are falling water and applause. These tend to bring
out the worst in most compressed formats. Of course if you are only
going to listen to the music on cheap headphones with a cheap portable
device, all of this may not be much of an issue.
